CULTURAL DIVERSITY AND THE IRS
(C)1996 Alan M. Schwartz
Cultural diversity is the Federally-mandated process by which
people with no qualifications other than apocryphal tales of
atrocities levied against their presumed ancestors Officially
displace persons with demonstrable abilities, lest the
educational or industrial milieu become efficient and productive.
Washington wants the whole country to work as do its own
corridors of power, privilege, pork, and hypocrisy. That the
rest of America does not get to print greenbacks to make up the
difference is a moot point.
Each April 15 Caesar seizes what can be grasped by law; seized by
guile and ambiguity; or wrested by fear, intimidation, and
outright terrorism. The IRS mocks Lady Godiva's nude horseback
ride protest of her husband's abusive taxation in the year 1040.
Were you to submit the required IRS forms and payments
accompanied by a polite letter of demurrage, you would be liable
to Federal arrest, fine, and imprisonment. The IRS would attend
to you personally and expeditiously through their own private
constabulary and court systems plus a prophylactic audit down to
your toenails. Murder, rape, arson, and even civil insurrection
occupy lesser priorities among Federal prosecutors because they
do not engender revenue enhancement.
Celebrations of ethnic diversity among People's of Color
historically exploited by White Protestant European oppressors is
Officially subsidized lest the dark hordes vote for Republicans
and the realization of earned private wealth. As the Catholic
Church trades parishioners' proximate squalor and full collection
plates for afterlife promises, so the ruling government
optimistically leases the votes of its victims through Welfare
for the next election. This Official subsidy of what would be
social and legal suicide in a productive citizen engenders a
certain stretch to the envelope of tax protest. The One True
Church never forgave Semites for inventing the Devil-spawned
cipher (and trigonometry, which begat deep sea navigation and the
New World). God does His blessed arithmetic in numerals. Roman
numerals.
It would be a simple matter, as a matter of personal minority
rights, to submit Form 1040 as God intended - decorated with I
(one), V (five), X (ten), L (fifty), C (one hundred), D (five
hundred), M (one thousand) concatenated in ritually and
pecuniarily proper ways - courtesy of your computer. IRS code
long ago exceeded the heft of the Bible in textual bulk and
ambiguity, and certainly in the size of the tithe from the get
go. Church and State are separate. You may not be forced to
violate your God, even if it means not saluting the flag or not
admitting to military conscription. The ACLU will assuredly
support you in your quest to do Form 1040 in blessed numerals.
(And if not, there are other and broader avenues available
through a bit of inspired computer hacking, to follow.)
The opportunity to retrain an army of part-time (no benefits or
pension) IRS minimum wage workers to disentangle the complexities
of Roman numerals heralds a new age of enhanced Federal
employment. Uncle Sam has always been big on spending vast sums
of money to train large numbers of people to no useful end.
Consider the armed forces, Federal procurement procedures, and
Project Head Start; the Peace Core, CETA, HUD, and the National
Endowment for the Arts.
Approximately 20% of all Federal tax returns are now filed
electronically. The protocols are standardized, without strong
(any) encryption protection, and limited to just a few phone
numbers for tele-input. Imagine a small but expert clique of
viruses wandering the electronic highways and byways of our great
nation, listening for the fax and raw data squeals headed toward
IRS processing centers. How simple it would be to on the fly
minutely alter 20 million tax returns to conform to God's will.
Who could object to divine intervention?
Why stop with Roman numerals? Arabic does not avail itself of
Arabic numerals. We cannot in good conscience require celebrants
of Muslim diversity to compromise their beliefs any more than we
could require "citizens" to vote ballots printed in English
rather than Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese... It would be wrong.
Education 2000 is upon us, wherein the process of evolving
personal empowerment and self-esteem is more important than
obtaining a rigid, close-minded answer. How delicious Form 1040
will be when 2+2=5 for sufficiently large values of 2. We can
rest assured that 2+2 will NEVER equal 3 for any values of 2, no
matter how small. IRS toleration has its limits above and beyond
any hallucination of personal rights.